The single point earned in Turkey must seem like a distant memory for Kamui Kobayashi and the Sauber team, which had hoped the good result was finally going to indicate an upswing in the team’s fortunes after a torrid start to its 2010 campaign.

Sadly, this seems far from the case, as the Swiss squad has succeeded – via Kobayashi – in being eliminated in Q1 at the subsequent rounds in Canada, and now Valencia.

Understandably describing himself as “very disappointed”, Kobayashi spoke with the waiting press after his Q1 knockout and added: “My first run on the Prime (harder) tyres was okay and when we changed to the Option (softer) tyres I was expecting a lot more from them for the second run, but there was no extra grip.

“Anyway, I didn’t exploit the potential because on my first flying lap with the softer tyres I locked the front wheels, which resulted in them being flat spotted – that’s why I felt vibrations in the car and this ruined my second flying lap. It’s a shame.”

Contrastingly, team-mate Pedro de la Rosa avoided the embarrassment of being turfed at Q1 and his Q2 performance sees him start two places ahead of Kobayashi, in 16th place.

“[The grid spot] doesn’t look great but I must say I am quite happy with what we did in qualifying,” Pedro said. “In Q1, especially, our performance was really good. We improved the car after free practice and the changes paid off.”